Breaking Into Commercial Real Estate in 2021

all right on this episode working capital the real estate podcast i have justin kibble on the show justin is the founder of break into cre for those of you that don't know that's commercial real estate they're a leading source of financial modeling and career training for people trying to break into the industry awesome podcast he also has a youtube channel by the same name breaking the cra which has over 18 000 subscribers which is pretty impressive for the commercial real estate industry anyways stay tuned hope you like the show justin how's it going it's going great man thanks for uh thanks for having me out awesome well like i said i'm super excited to have you on i've kind of followed you online for a number of years now and i think uh just kind of joking around before the show we were talking how you know commercial real estate can come sometimes be a little behind when it comes to social media so what i'd like for you to tell listeners is first of all you know who you are your uh your background in real estate and how you came to uh to do what you're doing today yeah no problem uh so i i started out in real estate uh probably similar to a lot of people in that i i knew of people for me it was specifically a family member who had invested in real estate and they had a pretty great life uh i thought kind of as a result of that so i i decided to go down the real estate path because i was looking at okay i really like math i really like kind of tangible buildings traveling to new cities uh this seems like it could be a really good fit for me so uh i had the opportunity to join a family business uh my great grandfather was a developer in tucson arizona so he built up shopping malls and regional shops and bought up a bunch of apartment complexes and mobile home parks and just some kind of piecemeal properties that built up over time but he died in 1995 so for about 20 years it was hanging out not doing much so after i graduated college there was an opportunity to go there and i worked in basically an asset management capacity so we weren't really buying much we were just managing deals and at that time i was 2011 2012 to 2014. as i was working there i was thinking i was getting a little bit too tunnel visioned if that makes sense i was in a relatively small city and i was a young guy wanted to move to southern california and so basically what i did was i decided to go to business school to see kind of how the institutional players do it and to be around some really sharp real estate investors so that's what i did so i went to uc irvine for my mba i had the opportunity to intern at three different shops so i worked at mig real estate to work at a company called hff which is now a part of jl and so i was working in retail and office sales there and i was to end up working for them in san diego long story short i met my wife at business school she had a job lined up in san diego so we were headed down to san diego from orange county and basically what happened was i was packaging up a deal for a client and they said hey we need a senior associate it was a great entrepreneurial type opportunity uh so i went and worked for them after business school down in san diego it was awesome uh really really great training ground to basically be a hands-on entrepreneur in a sense with a salary so i was doing everything there asset management acquisitions some investor relations i mean it was it was an excellent opportunity i loved it i was just really focused on getting to the multi-family side uh and then i went to fairfield residential which at that time was a subsidiary of brookfield and uh worked in multi-family acquisitions there had a great time uh really really enjoyed the people that i worked with and just me overall and essentially i had a consulting opportunity come up and i was like okay i'm gonna take a shot at this and see what happens and during that time trying to figure it out i thought well there's there's an opportunity here for maybe an educational platform i've i've been on the receiving end of hell of being helped trying to figure out how to make it in this industry and i feel like i didn't have a great resource for me when i was trying to go through this so uh i kind of started to try and create one and it started with a few videos and kind of grew from there the interest and yeah it's kind of a new way of saying where i am today but yeah that's my background it's been a lot of different things in the real estate industry which i think has been excellent because i've been able to see different parts of the business and meet a lot of really smart people who were much smarter than me and see how they look at and analyze deals and to also be in very different situations with different companies as well uh to see the inner workings of that how the kind of hiring process goes uh and basically how to be successful in those types of roles so uh yeah that's that's the breakdown yeah that's really cool you know what you're not the first person i i've heard uh say that you know they've gone to do an acquisitions job and that was kind of a breeding ground for them to be entrepreneurial in the future and it kind of makes sense i mean any of the colleagues i work with that are in the acquisition teams it's really as close as you can get to being the investor but working within a shop right you're looking at deals you're underwriting them so how did that play into kind of what you've created today online and in terms of the education that you have with kind of the acquisition hat on you know how did that influence what you're what you're currently doing today um so so when i was first starting to think about creating content i knew going through the educational process and trying to find things outside of just being on the job and also outside of traditional academia a lot of the the content out there if there wasn't much out there but the stuff that was out there felt very high level and kind of like a paper real estate investor if you will so what i wanted to do was create a resource that applied kind of hands-on real-life experience of doing deals and then mesh that with the institutional best practices of this is how you create an excel model and this is what the expectation is when you're working with either institutional investors or if you are actually just an employee and you're an analyst or an associate what are you going to have to do if you work for a big company like a brookfield or goldman sachs what does that look like and what are the expectations because for me it it really felt like a black box when i was first trying to get into this industry right it felt like it was very intimidating i mean a lot of guys are great in the industry and they're willing to talk to you but there are some places that you're going where you'll step into an office and it kind of feels like an ivory tower right you're just you're really and and there there can be some status things going on where people are are protective of their space and uh it can be intimidating when you first start out and so what i really wanted to do was be that guy that i had when i was starting out that guys that were five years to me did for me on a small scale and i wanted to do that on a larger scale so um that's kind of how my platform evolved and still how i operate my business in a sense of i i want to be that support for people and make this process less intimidating and not any more complicated than it has to be because it's it can be overwhelming to start with and there's no need to make it even more overwhelming or complex so i guess the question is what do you do in terms of trying to help people break into siri that say have had no experience in the commercial real estate world that you know are just in university right now maybe a couple years in and they're starting to look at their prospects post uh post university yeah so so number one is i i try to equip them with a technical skill set that that really matters in in commercial real estate because you can go out and you can learn excel and it's great if you know excel and excel is an important piece of it but you need to be able to put it together with real estate finance knowledge and there are specific things in commercial real estate underwriting and analysis that you're going to be expected to do on on day one of a job so what i like to do first is with someone who's coming in totally raw and has no experience and maybe is in school right now that's a great opportunity to merge what you're doing right now in school with learning the technical aspects of underwriting and modeling because that's really how you're going to add value from day one i mean you and i both started in the industry at some point we got our start in the beginning when we first started in our first job you you don't have contacts you've not you haven't done a deal before you don't understand the whole entire process but something that you can do to add value no matter how inexperienced you are is if you understand excel and you can modify a model or create a model from scratch there's a lot of older guys in the industry who are out doing deals who either don't want to do this anymore and they've they've spent their time and they're they're done and they're on to the next thing uh they don't have the time to do it or there's there's a lot of really seasoned guys in the industry who don't actually don't know how to do it and so if if you can come in with a really strong excel skill set where you're able to do things like model out 10 years of cash flows or build an equity waterfall model or do some of these things that you're seeing on job descriptions uh you're you're gonna be able to add a lot of value from day one and that's that's one of the biggest wins for people looking to break into the industry without experience because you can come in and you already have the a large portion of the training you need to get started and the company that you work with is going to have a way of underwriting deals right they're gonna they're gonna look at certain deals in this state and this state in a certain way or they're going to look at certain deals with this kind of risk profile in a certain way and you can learn all of those things and you will learn those things on the job but what what companies don't want right now is especially right now when hiring is so tight is they don't they don't want someone that's a liability on the excel side right they don't want somebody that doesn't understand the real estate cash flow statement and also doesn't understand the basic calculations right cap rate irr equity multiple cash on cash they want all of those things taken care of because those are things that there you can learn on your own and you don't need to be on the job to learn it and then everything else is just reps and and training over time um so what i really try to do is give people that technical framework and knowledge and then apply that at the same time to what they're going to actually be doing on the job um and whether that's at a mega huge corporation or a smaller entrepreneurial firm i try to blend my experience in both to make it applicable to both scenarios because two companies in commercial real estate can be completely different than one another and can operate completely differently so uh i feel like that's why i said in the beginning of this i i'm really grateful that i've had so many different experiences in the industry because i've been able to see how different companies do things and it it can be extremely different so my students and members of my program really come from all facets and are looking to go into all different facets of commercial real estate um but that technical component and skill set is something that you can really tackle before you get into the industry and that's gonna set you apart from from so many people when especially in a competitive job environment like we're seeing today yeah for sure and i think a lot of times with with brokerages or real estate investment companies in general they'll use you know an accounting degree or economics degree or finance degree as a proxy for exactly what you're talking about that that you know there at least is going to be an understanding of how to do a discounted cash flow or they're going to know some of the certain things one one thing i i also tell a younger uh people that are trying to break in and i've seen it in your videos is understanding the the terminology of our industry you know it's one thing that will set you apart from uh other people even you know right out of school or even after that where you can like you said not only understand uh being able to have that technical aspect but understanding a little bit more deeply you know what net you know what net rent means what are additional rent you know what are expense reimbursements stuff that we say all the time and i i hate jargon in any industry but you know our industry it's it's it's jargon i mean they're terms for a reason right because there is nuance in them and so if you had somebody you know you have somebody that comes to you that let's say wants to get onto the development side rather than say brokerage and you know they're they're getting their excel skills they're getting them you know where they need to be now from an actual you know whether you're going to a hinds or a brookfield and you want to break into some of these larger companies where where are you telling them to go and what are you telling them to do aside from what we just talked about you know preparing yourself in terms of actually reaching out to these companies and landing a role yeah so uh a lot of my content on on youtube is very focused on this and then i have quite a bit of content within my programs and courses on this as well but i mean just like everyone says in in real estate uh your network is extremely important and especially when you're talking about somebody who is in college either undergraduate or a graduate program you you really have more free rein than ever to reach out to people especially alumni and say hey i'm looking to break into this industry i would love to just hear about what you do and and there are a lot of people out there and most people will enjoy talking about themselves most people will will really uh remember that time i remember that time very well i i look back at some of my linkedin messages and my emails and i cringe oh you're like oh god i yeah i was just so aggressive with this i i would just fire off these emails my goal when i went when i got uh into my mba program was i i wanted to sit down with at least two new people a week uh and sit down could mean having coffee uh or sit down could mean getting on the phone but i wanted to really get different perspectives to see where i fit best in the industry so um it's kind of a two-pronged approach and this is this is why i interned at so many different places because i wanted to see uh where where i fit in best but for people who are looking to break in aside from the technical component i would say number one try and use whatever your current situation is so whether you're in university uh grad school or you're you're a career switcher and maybe you're in a different part of finance and you have a buddy who's working in real estate right now use use that to have that as an in to start building a network and really understand what different parts of the business do and if that would be the right fit for you personally based on your personality type because there are a lot of different things that you can do in real estate and maybe you don't have the kind of outgoing nature to be an investment sales broker but maybe you are really analytical and you want to be on the underwriting and portfolio analysis side at a major company and there's huge career upside in both of those things and the most career upside from what i've found personally and from people who have been successful in my programs are the people who kind of follow what they what they really want to do and who who they are right like you you're not going to be in in most cases that i've seen you're not going to be successful if you're you're really trying to fit a square peg into a round hole so if you know that you're a super outgoing guy and you love building relationships and you love networking then then investment sales could be great for you or any sort of brokerage could be great for you but if it's not then you're probably going to struggle and so just being aware of where you fit in the industry and trying to build your network and using your situation to your advantage is are two things that are again massive pieces of the puzzle aside from just learning the technical components yeah i think there's this um there's this push or has been this push in the past from education uh or from an educational point of view to you know shore up the areas that you're not as strong in and i always thought the opposite it's like find out what you are strong and kill that and like even myself like on the investing and uh brokerage side have no problem speaking with people no problem you know going out and networking where i have colleagues like they're they're terrified of that and then on the flip side i don't mind underwriting deals but i you know getting into the the minutia of certain you know waterfall models or building them i would rather just not do that at all and there's no sense you taking all of that opportunity cost and basically trying to get yourself up to average when you already excel in another area would would you agree with that i totally agree with that and i i have i i get this question so much where people will see my content and they know that it's pretty analytical training yeah and they'll say well i want to be a an acquisitions director or head of acquisitions at xyz company and i but i i really see myself as a leader and i i don't see myself sitting behind a computer screen and i i just can't see that being me and what i my response to that is is generally like if you are an acquisitions director even at the highest levels you're going to be reviewing models like you're going to you're going to have some sort of deal structure that's going to come in that you're probably not going to trust someone with one to two two years of experience to build out for you so you're going to need to step in and do that and at every level in between you need to be able to review models see how different assumptions are going to tweak your models um and so it it's it's a it's tough you don't you need to my recommendation is generally to make sure that your end goal is aligned with what you like to do and that the process is enjoyable because like i said there are so many different avenues you can take in this business and they're all so different and so if you like real estate and you want to learn more about real estate most people get into this industry and in my experience and what i hear from just member and student feedback is people want to get into this industry a lot of the times for in the kind of high finance commercial real estate component because they ultimately want to own their own real estate or they want to own their own deals like many people who get into this industry are entrepreneurial they don't plan to work for someone forever and so really understanding like hey where am i strong because even if you want to do your own deals you can always hire someone or partner with someone who's better than at that than you are and i've seen that so many times with people i think you you're probably a good example of that somebody who partners with someone who's maybe stronger in another area and you do what you do best i remember i was i was looking at an asset management role um maybe in 2016 or something or some at some period where i was looking to get back into multi-family and wanted to focus on multi-family and i had one of my mentors and one of the guys that i invest with today as a limited partner and has really been helpful in my career i was i asked him should i go into asset management and he was like well do you want to be an asset manager and i said well no not really but i think it'd be a really good thing for me to really see at a high level at an institutional from an institutional perspective how this is done and be the guy how the program the pros do it so to speak yeah yeah exactly and i i had done it on on smaller scales and on for retail and office at higher levels but not specifically for multi-family and what he said to me is he said well if if you end up going out and doing your own deals you can hire that you can hire someone who can do that for you and since that time i've always had that in the back of my head he actually ended up going out on his own and doing just that and also i've i've seen that time and time again where maybe you have a guy that's really has a great network and can find deals and then you have somebody else who can line up the capital and financing and all of that and they don't have someone that maybe is too operational and they can just hire that uh whereas i've also seen people who have been very successful coming from the operations side but maybe they don't have access to capital or maybe they they don't really have a great acquisitions track record but they know how to actually execute on a business plan and staying with your asset management or acquisitions or whatever you like to do and getting really really really good at that one thing is going to help you make a lot of money and also enjoy what you're doing a lot more so just to tie it all back together i would say for people who are looking to break into the industry that uh want to be in real estate but maybe they don't want to have just a brain full of excel every day or or they can't get on the phone like you said there's still probably a place for you you just need to be aware of that and go with that yeah for sure i mean that's the one beautiful thing about real estate it's like you are as an investor at least you're building a team right and every component of that team is usually a different uh person with a different disposition than the other you know the asset manager the property manager the limited partner the uh the investor you know the guy that's underwriting and analyzing deals so there's all this there's all these different areas that i think will be a skill set that you can have but and into partnering you're absolutely right and we talk about it on the show a lot you know don't find a partner um that you're both bringing the exact same thing to the table if you're both bringing in capital and you're both great underwriters you know maybe partner with them but add a had a third member to that team that actually complements uh you know compliments you so that you can actually go out and be well-rounded as a as a company so for you know i could be wrong but it just seems from talking with you and just seeing your videos that by nature you seem a little bit more analytical and it kind of flies in the face of putting yourself out there and being on youtube so when you decided to start doing videos and going on social media and stuff like that first of all am i right and and number two you know what was that process like it was it was it difficult for you to kind of put your face out there because i know it's you know even for myself it's like yeah i'm pretty outgoing guy but you know you're watching videos of yourself and it's sometimes it's pretty cringy oh man you're spot on so uh yeah i i don't i don't love it i don't love the the spotlight i mean i have a very small channel in comparison to other youtubers out there that really do this for a living but again it was like i felt like this information needed to be out there and you start to get i mean you you have a very public platform as well and so i'm sure you start to see these these messages come in from people saying this really helped me do x y and z and it's the only thing that keeps me going man oh yeah it's it's it's it is honestly really cool like it sounds like a bunch of bs sometimes but it it really matters and the stuff you're doing really matters so yeah i i i'm not a great youtuber right like i do the same thing in every single video every single time it's the same background i don't i don't i'm not great with b-roll or any of that kind of stuff uh you're right i'm very analytical i i love my courses because so many of those courses are very excel based and so i'm just walking through this with people um and it's not all about me it's about what are you building right yeah and uh so on youtube it it was very difficult to get started uh and it's still difficult to this day but i feel like that basic content around just how to break into the industry and and general analysis concepts that was something that when i was first getting started i would have killed four i was there it didn't feel like there was anything in the middle right so you you have you have like the very high level just very very academic information and yeah that's that's great and you you should know all of that and then you have the other side of the spectrum that is like financial freedom with multi-family like yeah all of those if you know what i'm saying like a hundred percent those things can those things can be great but i didn't i felt like well i kind of i kind of want to like learn this at a high level but i also want to be able to apply it and i want i want someone to talk to me like if if if i'm in an office with a guy that's three years ahead of me he can sit down with me and say hey dude like this is this is how you do this this is what you do this is why you do it and you're you're going to be okay you know uh because yeah you're right i'm the super analytical guy like when i first started out and i didn't know anything those days in the office were really nerve-wracking i mean just you always worry you're gonna get an assignment that you don't know how to do um and so being able to be in someone's corner is is a really cool thing and it's kind of like a pay forward thing i talked about a mentor that i had and i i have so many guys who have been successful in the past who have taken so much time with me when i was first getting started really trying to help me learn the ropes and listening to all my stupid questions and really helping me find my way and without those people i i would not be doing what i'm doing today and so when when i talk to people and when i create content and when i create courses it's around that right like helping that guy that was me that was so nervous and trying to trying to figure everything out and piece everything together and failing a lot in that process um a lot of times with with things i talked about that entrepreneurial firm that i worked with there were a lot of things that that it was just me i mean you usually have some sort of training wheels and it was just me and if i messed up i'm i'm in trouble and so i what i want to do is create that kind of safe space resource where someone can come back to whether they have a job or they're looking for a job that maybe they run into something and they're like oh no i i don't know how to do this they can come back to a course or my platform or uh breaking a cre academy has a coaching feature you can come back to me and say whoa this was a an experience that i wasn't expecting what are your thoughts or something like that um so that's kind of how i try to run my platform as a whole yeah that's great and i mean like the the we were talking about this before the show like if to me you say it's a smaller channel but like they're on the real estate spectrum of channels on youtube like you said you have the ones that are very like they remind me of like the 1990s infomercials like there's a red ferrari and three blondes and you're like get into real estate yeah and then there's the side that you're actually you're not only are you in real estate on youtube so that kind of makes the pool even smaller you're in commercial real estate which makes the pool even smaller and then you're really like on the side of people actually going in and being practitioners not necessarily investors so um the fact that it's as large as as it is is is incredible to me but i think you're absolutely right too like the thing you know anytime that you're like ah what's the point of putting these videos out or you know maybe at the beginning when you're putting yourself out on social media and it goes for anybody listening that wants to get themselves out there you get that one message from a from somebody you know in in idaho or something that's just like hey this video is really impactful for me and it really helped me in this way and that definitely fuels um kind of your the creativity that you had but the last few videos that um you know i saw from you were you know very very topical they were talking about kind of looking for jobs within the downturn um talking about how your underwriting deals today interest rates and where they are so i think as long as they stay topical they're always adding value what i wanted to ask you though in terms of the actual courses that you do why don't you give listeners just kind of a background of how it's different from the stuff on youtube and and maybe what it allows you to do that perhaps youtube doesn't necessarily yeah uh you sorry you cut out one more time i was just trying to follow but oh sorry yeah how much do you get there we'll cut we'll cut that out uh you're you're like trying to uh i guess cater to a an audience that you narrowed down the audience oh there you go okay yeah but then yeah i you were in and out on okay i'll just i'll i'll just redo it quickly yeah sorry i was trying to let you go no no no problem no problem yeah so i mean we were talking about this a little bit before uh the podcast but that you know your youtube channel you said was on the smaller end but to me the idea that there's a youtube channel that is in commercial real estate uh you know that's a very specific area to begin with so i think you've you know you've put out a bunch of great content whether it's interest rates whether it's underwriting deals the question i had was more so about the courses that you do so when you you know you see the content that you have in youtube how are the courses different and maybe how do they allow you to do things that perhaps you can't do on youtube yeah great question uh so youtube is like you talked about right i mean you have youtube is a gigantic platform and if you're kind of catering to 18 to 30 year olds most of those people are also watching other videos on youtube right so there's there's a little bit of a high level overview that needs to be incorporated into most of these videos even though they can get pretty granular what i can't do on youtube is walk through an entire model build out right so if you're trying to build a multi-family acquisition pro forma and you're starting from scratch and this is something that you're trying to learn for maybe a job that you have or or preparing for an excel interview exam that's a great great example where i have a course that's literally nine hours of just preparing for excel interview questions that you might end up getting when you're interviewing for a small firm or a big firm so i can't go as nearly as in depth on the excel modeling side and i also can't share resources so there's all i mean every single course that i have has some sort of either an excel training file which i i i took some courses that were just excel based when i was first starting out and i found these basically these these step-by-step excel training files where you're doing something with the instructor and then you have a solution right there to check that with you i felt i found that very very helpful so most of my courses really start with that base of here these are the this is the foundation and we're going to build these things together and build on this foundation throughout the entire course and then maybe we'll have a more advanced section where we'll have at the end of the course a full case study where you'll be building out a full model or maybe you'll be doing evaluation of a sample deal and then we have the more advanced courses which are really focused on building an entire model from scratch like something that you would be either working in in kind of an institutional setting or you would be expected to create or modify or whatever that looks like um but yeah on youtube youtube is great for a lot of the career related stuff because that can be those can be quick seven to ten minute videos um but for people who are really looking for the training i mean some people reach out to me and say hey i've been watching your youtube videos they've been super helpful and those are great for high level overviews and behavioral type things when you're when you're trying to prepare for an interview but if you really want the technical skill sets that's something that i can't offer on on youtube and that's really where the course content comes into play and for people who are really looking to break into the industry and master real estate financial modeling and and be that person that you step into a role and you're valuable from day one or you step into an interview and and the hiring manager goes wow this yeah this person is exactly what we need we got to get this guy that's that's what you want and and that's really where the courses come into play where those that's how i train people to end up being that person you know and it's i think i've seen the same thing where i've put out you know youtube videos where it's say it's going through a deal and you know you get you always get a message hey can you send me that excel file yeah yeah and it's like exactly right like you can talk about interest rates you can talk about the state of the economy you know in a five to ten minute video but once you start getting in the weeds 100 i can see how you know just another platform is a little bit easier yeah it's it's it's a lot easier and it's and also there's there's a dialogue too right like there are comments on youtube but again that's that's not a constructive place to have a conversation so so for single standalone classes my anyone who joins my program or joins my individual individual courses they can ask questions on course content directly within that course player so if they have a question as they're going through something they can ask they can ask that question and my my focus is making sure that that they understand that question and understand the answer very very thoroughly um again like not this brief one sentence or one word answer but i want to make sure that it's really clear uh what what they're doing what they're trying the answer to the question that they're asking um so yeah there's that and then on my full break into cre academy platform there's also a dedicated uh coaching communication so people can actually reach out to me directly for career advice on their specific situation even if it's outside of course content so again i'm i'm in i'm in this person's corner right if if they're trying to prepare and they have specific questions for their specific situation though that's how i can help people uh do that so it's it's really that next level of help and and guidance to get people where they want to go i guess that would also be helpful for listeners that are on the investment side that they're you know say that they're there are entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs already in real estate and they're looking at an asset that they want a specific model for or kind of understand how to underwrite it would that kind of be the avenue that they would go maybe on the coaching end yeah so i i tend to stay away from from the actual deal analysis and i i i do consulting separately which is really doing that and doing a lot of real estate financial modeling uh and analysis on behalf of clients and so that is kind of the separate thing and and the academy coaching is really focused on career coaching but yeah for people who do want more of a kind of deal analysis or underwriting or looking with help with building a model for their own deal there's a consulting forum on my site that that people can reach out to me uh directly through that i'm not taking on new clients at the moment i've got a handful of groups that i work with and that i really enjoy working with um but just trying to manage everything yeah no no 100 okay well listen we uh we're almost out of time here i usually do a few quick questions at the end here a little bit of rapid fire style so if you're ready i'll uh i'll fire away i'm ready man okay so for uh doesn't necessarily have to be real estate but you know most people on the show do answer in the real estate space um favorite book uh that's helped you in what you're doing in your space oh favorite book that's helped me with what i'm doing i would i'm gonna give two uh and this is very consistent with my platform uh number one is real estate finance and investments by peter lienemann i was going to say lindaman i got to get him on the show no it's real it's a great textbook and i i refer people to that textbook because it talks to you in an academic way but it also talks to you in a way of hey man this is what is what you need to know uh and it's understandable and it's not not too big not too short it's it's wonderful so that really helped me put everything into context and i really focused on understanding everything in that book too as i worked through it another one that i don't hear talked about all that much is a book called confessions of a real estate entrepreneur by a guy named jim randall i think he's out on the east coast and i think he actually was an adjunct professor at nyu or one of those east coast universities and that that book is all about his hands-on experience and it's it's a long time ago but it has some great lessons about things like conversions into different uses and just how much money can be made in real estate if you do things correctly and if you structure deals in the right way and structure financing in the right way and it's really in in the trenches guide i i really for people who want to do their own thing or maybe want to do their own thing one day i really strongly recommend that book because that that will really give you a hands-on look into this is this is what it's like and this is what the opportunity is and this is also what the risks are it's funny like the lindemann book is the subtitle is risks and opportunities and it does go through it in more of like an academic way yeah but this this other book this confessions of a real estate entrepreneur really goes through it like you'll see the opportunity of these guys who did this deal and made this many millions of dollars in 45 days versus like the more uh versus the risks which are these guys lost a bunch of money doing this so yeah i think both are really helpful that's great and i'll just add on the linumen point what's what's great about his book like many textbooks is his appendix uh is very in-depth so that when he does you know one thing in chapter two you know that little uh you know superscript you can actually go into the appendix and be like okay now i can kind of see how the model broke down or or kind of a little bit more of a deeper dive okay um so you mentioned a little bit earlier but who are is one or a few of the mentors that helped you out uh at the beginning of your career yeah so uh a lot of guys that you you wouldn't have heard of but they are the presidents and ceos of uh some major real estate investment firms uh most of them are in orange county i'm local in san diego but a few guys in san diego but it's really guys who have been there and done that and and have done a lot of the things uh that are are necessary and have have walked that path already and have already experienced success um i there there's one in particular um he is he's the ceo and starting to move into like more of a chair type role as he transitions and gets a little bit older um but he he understood my entrepreneurial spirit he understood what i was trying to do and he was very transparent with this is what i've done and this is what i suggest you do because i've seen so many young guys come through the industry and i know this this path i've seen before in this path i've seen before and if you do x y and z thing then you'll you'll be very successful and so um for me again those conversations still stick with me today and i i remember certain pieces of those conversations because i try to i i mean i'm i'm a young guy still and and i have a certain amount of industry experience but nothing close to these guys are 65 70 years old but i try to pass on some of those things that i learned in my programs for people who are looking for advice because like i said i mean i i really sat down with two to two to four people a week uh during business school and built some great relationships and many people that i still keep in touch with today and uh so yeah i would i wouldn't be here without the people who have who've really done that and then have turned around and said hey i've made my money i've done what i wanted to do and now i'm ready to help the next generation yeah it's great and you kind of pass the torch or they pass it to you and you you know you kind of do the same thing for the younger generation so speaking on that point uh the third one would be something that you know today about the industry that you wish you knew when you started out yeah so i know it could be a long list of that one yeah so so one of my i keep talking about mentors but i man i i've looked through some of my linkedin and email messages and i i cringe i i reached out to a lot of people um but through that there were a lot of great people who who responded and we built a relationship over time this was a guy that was a third party consultant uh at a company that i worked at and uh this was actually actually my family business before i went to business school and i was trying to decide on what to do and he was really experienced and kind of took me under his wing and one thing that he would always say to me is that real estate isn't rocket science and i think when you get into don't don't tell anybody that yeah yeah yeah well i and you can make it really complicated and many firms need that when you get into the really institutional space and you're raising capital from a bunch of different equity investors and you really need to know the details down to the sense that's that's really important um but at the end of the day it's easy to see commercial real estate as this really huge intimidating industry with a lot of really intimidating people when what it comes down to it is it's basic supply and demand and everyone uses real estate in everyday activities in everything that you do so it's with many of these product types it's relatively easy to understand and the the supply and demand drivers are also relatively easy to understand and if you put it in that context and within even the real estate financial modeling realm what you're trying to do when you're building a model is project out what your cash flows are going to be what do you think your cash flows are going to be it doesn't really matter what formulas you use or like it doesn't matter if if you if somebody's telling you you need to measure your irr if all you care about is your annual dividend yield look at your cash on cash if you don't care about your ir you don't plan on selling the deal at any point take a look at that but if you if you look at it and say instead of seeing this as this expansive overwhelming thing where there's so many complexities to it if you can say okay real estate comes down to supply and demand this is something that i use on an everyday basis and what is my goal with investing in real estate or being in real estate in the first place like we talked about many people want to get into the real estate industry because they want to do their own thing well that should go into your kind of thought process with what kind of job you get you're trying to get um everything just falls into place much more easily and it feels a lot more attainable and tangible um so yeah real estate isn't rocket science i wish i had internalized that more when i was first starting out um but yeah yeah you can make it rocket science but it doesn't need to be well yeah that's that's the great point it's like you can make it as complex as you want it and we could talk just like anything in finance we can talk in a language that you could have nobody understand that's not in the industry if we really wanted to and it doesn't help anybody makes you feel smart and that usually alienates people exactly so my last question uh my favorite of the bunch your first car make and model ooh uh 95 dodge intrepid man that thing was really rusted as a boat that was that was a boat that's exactly what it was yeah everybody called it that it was really it was really a boat i love that thing though i was i was bumping music in that thing i i loved it i kept it until yeah well those first car cars man doesn't matter what it is it uh it was a symbol of freedom so that's awesome uh well listen where can people we'll put you know links to all your content uh so youtube as well as any of the programs but if there's any other area where can people reach out to you yeah so so the break and cr youtube channel uh is great for free content and the general overview of what i do and also uh just general commercial real estate career and analysis training in general and then if you want to take a deeper dive and really build those analytical skill sets and modeling skill sets or if you're preparing for an interview exam or really the application process and want somebody really more in your corner and that can answer your questions then break into cre.com is going to give you access to all of the individual courses if you're just looking for one or two classes and that's all you're looking for or the full breaking the cre academy program which if you've watched any of my videos you've probably heard this already but you'll get access to all breaking the cre courses uh every single real estate financial model that we have as far as templates is concerned are concerned and then also uh excel training files as well so you can practice those and excel interview exam training and all of that stuff and then you'll also get one-on-one coaching for career questions as well i guess today has been justin kimball you've been listed in working capital the real estate podcast thanks jason thanks jesse i appreciate it [Music] you

Channel: Jesse Fragale

Views: 2,037

Keywords: breaking into commercial real estate, Breaking Into Commercial Real Estate 2020, breaking into commercial, commercial real estate, commercial real estate canada, commercial real estate investing, real estate, real estate agent, real estate coach, real estate coaching, real estate investing, real estate investing in canada, investing in real estate, multifamily real estate investing, commercial property advisors, entrepreneur, investing, kevin ward, realtor, yt:cc=on

Id: 3HrTpJtSthE

Length: 48min 27sec (2907 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020